


The Night Before

by LulaIsAKitten



Series: Octavia Street musings [9]
Category: Cormoran Strike Series - Robert Galbraith
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-31
Updated: 2019-03-31
Packaged: 2019-12-29 20:34:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18301463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LulaIsAKitten/pseuds/LulaIsAKitten
Summary: Spring 2001. Strike and Nick in the pub the night before the wedding.





	The Night Before

Strike set two pints on the little table in the village pub and sat down opposite his friend. Nick had several pieces of paper and a pen in front of him and was ticking items off.

“Flowers are being delivered to the house tomorrow morning,” he muttered. “Oggy fetching the buttonholes after ten, and moving our bags from the rooms here to the hotel. Car is booked for Ilsa and her dad at two.”

He looked up anxiously. “Who’s taking the orders of service for the ushers to hand out?”

Strike gazed at him impassively. “They’re already at the house, and Tom is in charge of getting them to the church,” he said. “You’ve been over all this three times, Nick. Put the paperwork away.” He pushed Nick’s pint across the table towards him.

Nick nodded absently and gazed down at his lists again. “Did we count the centrepieces?”

Strike reached over and took the sheets of paper from him, folding them up and putting them in his pocket. “Stop it,” he said firmly. “It’s all going to be fine.”

Nick opened his mouth to protest, but Strike held up a hand. “Ah! Stop. You have a church, a vicar, witnesses. That’s all you need. The rest is just tarting it up.”

Nick grinned and relaxed a little. “I know.” He picked up his pint and took a long swallow.

There was a pause. Strike could see Nick was still going over it all in his mind. He wondered what Ilsa, who had about five times as many things in her head, was doing. He was aware (and amused) that she had selected the tasks to delegate to her husband-to-be quite carefully.

“Right,” he said, pulling Nick’s attention back to the bustling pub. Friday night was busy. “You don’t need me to find a getaway car, then?”

Nick’s brows knitted in a puzzled look. “Getaway car?”

“Yeah. Not too late to back out, you know.”

Nick shook his head. “Don’t be silly.”

Strike looked at him levelly. “I’m not.”

“What?”

“It’s part of my duty, as best man. To give you an out.” Strike leaned forward across the table. “If you have any doubts, even just a prickle, now is the time to say so. We can hop in a taxi, stick you on a train, you can go hide out in my digs at Portsmouth for a few days while I sort everything here.”

Nick laughed. “Oggy, what are you talking about?”

“I’m just saying. Don’t get married with doubts. You’ll be miserable and end up divorced. Far better to say so now. It’s not too late.”

Nick shook his head. “You’re serious,” he said, wonderingly. “No. No doubts.”

“But if you did—”

“Oggy.” Nick looked his friend in the eye. “I have no doubts. I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life. I love her. I can’t live without her.”

There was a tiny pause, and then Strike sat back, grinning. “Okay, then,” he said. “We’re doing this.”

Nick grinned too. “We are doing this,” he said. Then a wicked impulse prompted him to add, “You’ve got the rings, right?”

A look of panic crossed Strike’s face. “You haven’t given them to me yet.”

“Yeah, I have. You’re in charge of them now.”

Strike froze. How could he have forgotten Nick giving him the rings? That was all he’d been given to do. Get the rings and the groom to the church, and collect up their suits and return them to the hire shop on Monday. He searched his normally capacious memory, but couldn’t come up with the moment he’d taken charge of them. Had he put them in his case?

Nick snorted into his pint and Strike glared at him, realisation dawning. He was being played.

“Your face!” Nick chortled.

“Fuck off,” Strike said amiably.

“They’re here, look.” Nick drew a ring box out of his pocket and put it on the table. Strike picked it up and opened it.

The two rings sat together, loose on the little pad, Ilsa’s slim gold band and Nick’s larger one, shiny and unblemished. Strike thought of Uncle Ted’s wedding ring with its dull patina, a million tiny marks from thirty years of wear, and imagined it being this new once. Suddenly the enormity of what his friends were doing truly hit him.

Reverently he picked Nick’s ring up and turned it over in his large fingers. Tomorrow’s date was engraved around the inside. It was heavier than he had been expecting. He tried to imagine putting it on, knowing you’d be wearing it for the rest of your life.

“Wouldn’t fit your big fingers,” Nick remarked, as if he’d read his friend’s mind.

“No,” Strike agreed. Nick’s hands were smaller than his, his fingers long and slender. Strike doubted he’d he able to get the band over the knuckle of even his little finger.

“Shall we put them away?” Nick said anxiously, reaching for the box. Strike relinquished it too soon, and the box fell from Nick’s grasp. Nick’s band was still between Strike’s fingers, but Ilsa’s ricocheted off the surface of the table with a little metallic ping and vanished.

There was a horrified pause. They heard it bounce on the stone floor a couple of times before the Friday night noise of the pub swallowed the sounds. Strike and Nick stared at one another in panic.

“Nobody move!” Strike shouted, standing up. The whole pub turned to look at him, falling silent.

“We’ve dropped a wedding ring. Hers. For tomorrow,” he said. Nick was already on the floor, crawling around.

There was a barked laugh from across the room. “You’re fucked, mate!” called a cheerful voice, and laughter erupted. In a moment, the whole pub had joined in the hunt, shuffling feet, peering into corners, ducking under tables.

Within a minute, a shout of triumph went up, and the ring was flourished. The assembled drinkers cheered loudly. Nick pounced, gabbling out his gratitude to the finder and taking possession of the ring with huge relief, clutching it in his hand as he made his way back to the table.

Strike raised his pint to the room. “Thank you all,” he said, grinning. “If we could, er, keep Ilsa from knowing about this until after tomorrow, we’d be very grateful.”

A chorus of cheers and laughter answered him as he sat back down. Half the people in the pub were locals who knew Ilsa and her family and knew the wedding was taking place tomorrow. Strike hoped Ilsa was going to see the funny side if the story got back to her.

Nick was not, it appeared. He was anxiously polishing the gold band on his shirt, inspecting it for scratches.

“It’ll be fine. She won’t notice until she’s worn it long enough to think it happened since she put it on,” Strike said soothingly. He put Nick’s ring back in the box.

Nick glared at him and put Ilsa’s in with it and snapped the box shut. “How about I hang onto these for a bit longer?” he said darkly.

“Good plan,” Strike grinned at him disarmingly as he fished his cigarettes and lighter from his jacket. Against his will, Nick laughed, relief taking over from panic. He put the box back in his pocket. Strike lit a cigarette and looked around for an ashtray.

Two pints were plonked on the table between them. A big hand clapped Nick on the back. “Good luck for tomorrow, lad,” said a deep voice. “Keep ’im under control, Corm.”

Strike grinned up at the older man. “I will. Thanks, Keith,” he said. “See you tomorrow.”

The big man tapped the side of his nose conspiratorially and winked, and went back to the bar.

“Ilsa’s dad’s best mate,” Strike said in answer to Nick’s puzzled look. “I’m pretty sure he won’t tell him you nearly lost her ring. Till after the ceremony at least.”

“Me? It was at least half your fault!”

“I’m sure Ilsa will take that into account,” Strike said drily.

Nick groaned and buried his head in his hands. Strike chuckled. “She’ll see the funny side,” he promised. “I’ve known her longer than you, remember? She doesn’t hold a grudge.”

Then he laughed. “Not since she was little, anyway.” He took another drag on his cigarette.

Nick looked up at him. “What do you mean?”

Strike grinned. “I peed in her paddling pool when we were seven. She yelled at me and told me boys were gross and didn’t speak to me for a week.” He winked. “And she said willies were disgusting and she never wanted to see one again as long as she lived. I guess she changed her mind about that some time in the intervening two decades.” Strike grinned wickedly and Nick snorted a laugh.

“Well, the next one she saw was mine ten years later, and that definitely changed her mind,” he said, and Strike spluttered into his pint and coughed. Nick grinned at his discomfort. “Not my fault yours put her off for a decade.”

Strike just looked at him, wiping a large hand across his mouth to remove beer foam. Nick smiled innocently. “What? You started it.”

“Yeah, but it’s usually me saying the crude things, not you!”

Nick winked. “Some of us are just too polite to say these things out loud most of the time,” he said.

Strike nodded. “True,” he said. “Funny, I always assumed...” He tailed off, suddenly wondering at the appropriateness of what he’d been about to say, and busied himself stubbing his cigarette out in the ashtray.

“What?”

“Er, nothing.”

“No, what?”

“Well. She went out with this guy from the year above when we were in the lower sixth. They seemed quite coupley. I just assumed—”

“Nope.” Nick was failing to hide an air of smugness. “I was her first.”

Strike smiled. “That’s very fitting,” he said. “Though I know for a fact she wasn’t yours.”

Nick shrugged. “Sadly, no,” he said. “But yeah, it doesn’t do any harm to the old ego, to have been the first.”

“And the one she came back to,” Strike said with a wink. “Obviously didn’t find anything better out there.”

Nick laughed and shook his head. “Right, that’s enough crude talk for the night before my wedding,” he said firmly. “After tomorrow, it’s not about what’s gone on before, it’s about the future.”

Strike nodded and raised his glass. “I’ll drink to that,” he said. They clinked glasses and took a long draught each.

“Sometimes I forget how long you and Ilsa have known each other,” Nick said as he put his glass down again. “Did you hang out a lot?”

“At primary school, yeah, when I was here. Ted and Joan lived literally next door to Ilsa’s family then. We were always in and out of each other’s houses. Ilsa was kind to Lucy.” Strike smiled fondly, remembering. Lucy had weathered their peripatetic childhood less well than him, quieter and more inclined to introspection. She had blossomed under the older girl’s friendship.

“Not so much once we went to secondary school. Ilsa’s mum and dad moved to the house they’re in now, only across the village but not next door any more,” he went on. “A few of us used to get the bus from the village down to St Mawes for school each day. There was one guy, Mark, the year above us, wouldn’t leave Ilsa alone. Kept twanging her bra strap in the summer when we didn’t have coats on. I bumped into him one day round the village and took him aside and...explained that his attentions weren’t appreciated.” Strike flexed his fist, remembering. “I was big for my age even then. He left her alone after that.”

Nick nodded.

“But it was different at secondary school. You know, puberty hits, it all changes. I never fancied Ilsa, but I suppose... I’d never really thought about the fact that she was a girl and I was a boy before then. She was always just Ilsa. But she started hanging round with her girlfriends more and me less. And you remember how it is, all the lads start talking about which girls they’d like to snog, and after a couple of years, which ones they’d like to shag. It was odd, hearing that other guys saw her like that.”

Strike smiled, remembering. “Then she got her glasses,” he said. “And that was really not a good look.”

“I like her glasses,” Nick said indignantly.

“Yeah, but in the ’80s she had those awful plastic NHS ones,” Strike said. “And she had to have braces on her teeth. She spent 18 months permanently looking like a worried rabbit.”

Nick laughed.

“Then mum dragged me and Lucy off to a commune for a bit, and when that all went pear-shaped and we got back the following year, she’d lost the braces, got trendy glasses and cut her hair into a bob. I didn’t recognise her the first time I saw her.”

Strike gazed at the wall, remembering. It had been the one and only time he’d ever reacted to Ilsa as a member of the opposite sex, his teenage hormones surging at the sight of this curvy, sexy version of his friend. Then she’d grinned at him and made some joke about him not being able to stay away from sleepy St Mawes, and suddenly she was just Ilsa again and the feeling was gone. He’d forgotten about it until now.

He cleared his throat. “And then I moved up to London and met you, and the following year you met her, and the rest is history,” he said, grinning. “And here we are.”

Nick smiled a little dreamily. “And here we are,” he said. He finished his second pint. “My round.”

“Er, no, it’s Cokes this time,” Strike said. Nick stared at him. “Cokes?”

“Your soon-to-be-wife made me promise I wouldn’t let you get pissed tonight. She said if you turn up tomorrow dishevelled and reeking of alcohol, she’s going to take it out on me. And she was pretty scary.”

Nick laughed. “I don’t doubt it,” he said. “But I’m twenty-seven. I’m not drinking Coke in the pub, for fuck’s sake. I’ll find something not too strong.”

“Nick—”

“All right, halves, then. Oggy, this is hardly a massive piss-up. We’ll go and get some chips or something after.”

Strike sighed. “Okay.”

He sat and smoked another cigarette while Nick went to the bar.

“So,” Nick said as he sat back down, passing Strike’s half pint across. “What exactly happened with Charlotte? I thought she was coming?”

Strike scowled. “She was, but—” He broke off and sighed, frustrated. “She threw a fit about me being down in Portsmouth training. She says it’s too far and she wants me in London.”

“But it’s to further your career, she must understand that.”

“She says I don’t need to bother with the SIB because she’s got enough money for us both.” Strike looked down at his drink. “She wanted me to move in with her. I said no. So she threw a bunch of crockery and we’re currently technically split up. She keeps texting, though.” He lit another cigarette.

“Sorry, mate.” Nick wasn’t sure what else to say. He was secretly glad Charlotte wasn’t coming to the wedding. He didn’t trust her not to try to draw the attention to herself somehow. He hadn’t wanted to invite her, but Ilsa had insisted. “She’s Corm’s other half, Nick. We can’t not.” She’d been right, and so the invitation had been issued, but Nick couldn’t claim to be sorry she wasn’t now going to put in an appearance. He was sorry for his friend’s pain, though, pain that he could sense hiding behind the apparent irritation.

Strike shrugged. “She’ll be back at some point,” he said. Then he gave a wicked grin. “In the meantime, is Claire still single?”

Nick laughed and shook his head. “What are you like?” he said fondly. “Yes, I believe so. She isn’t bringing a plus one.”

Strike’s grin grew broader. “Excellent,” he said. “It is after all traditional for the best man to sleep with a bridesmaid. And as she’s the only bridesmaid...”

“You should have planned this sooner, could have saved on paying for two rooms at the hotel,” Nick said cheerfully.

Strike laughed too and nodded.

“Right,” he said after a small pause. “We need to get some chips, maybe get a coffee into you, and then off to bed. You need a good night’s sleep.”

Nick looked at his watch. “It’s ten o’clock.”

“And by the time we’ve strolled down to the chippy and back, and had a couple of coffees, it’ll be eleven,” Strike said. “Come on.”

Chuckling to himself at his friend’s bossiness, Nick stood and shrugged his coat on. He was startled by a few calls of good wishes and raised pints as they headed towards the door. “Does everyone know each other round here?” he muttered as they waved a little self-consciously and ducked out through the doorway.

Strike laughed. “Pretty much.”

Strike lit another cigarette and the two young men strolled down the road towards the chip shop.

 


End file.
